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Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Blog Tour: Monument 14: Savage Drift by Emmy Laybourne

Hi everyone! I'm Emmy Laybourne, author of the MONUMENT 14 series. It’s such a pleasure to be here on Readingteen. Thanks to Amy and Austin for having me here and for helping with the blog tour! (Austin made my super-cool blog banner!) Here's a little Q and A:

What genre have you not yet written but really want to try?

I am aching to try my hand at a high fantasy! It’s going to take a little convincing, but I want to pitch my excellent editors Jean Feiwel & Holly West, that I write a fantasy trilogy in a world with a kind of liquid-metal cyborg dragons.

Thinking back to the way beginning, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned as a writer from then to now?

Don’t let yourself be distracted by the publicity aspect of a career as a novelist. Yes, it’s important to promote your work, but if you allow it to take too much of your time, your work will suffer.

Story has to come first. And if you clutter up your brain with marketing-this and giveaway-that, your subconscious won’t be working on your scenes and characters and lines. Your brain will be busy processing stress instead of spinning narrative gold!

What’s your strangest writing quirk or habit? Something that would make all of us go, “huh?”

I have a ritual I undertake every time before I sit down to write – I dim the lights, draw the shades, light a candle, put on a playlist specific to the project, take off my wedding rings and put on hand lotion. It’s weird, I know, that it’s so lengthy a routine. But it works. There’s something about that long runway that sets me up for major productivity.

If you could have one super power what would it be?

For years I would have said – to fly. But now, as a mother of two healthy and always hungry children, I’d like to have a super-power where I could multiply food by looking at it. Then I could go to India and feed all the slum-children with a single paneer paratha! Or travel to the favelas of Brazil and KA-POW– feijoada for all!

I’d be SuperFoodBringingLady! (Okay, maybe I should work on my superhero name.)

Since becoming a writer, what’s the most exciting thing to ever happen to you?

Oh man, I’m going to sound a bit shallow, but I think it was when MONUMENT 14 got reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. As a kid, my folks had the paper delivered everyday, and to read my name and see my work discussed in that oh-so-familiar newsprint was a serious, goosebump raising rush.

I have to say, his question is a great one to end this interview, because I’m here promoting my pre-order campaign for SAVAGE DRIFT! And the most exciting thing that could happen to, well, almost any writer is to hit the New York Times Bestseller’s list! Every pre-order helps… In fact, having a lot of pre-orders is really the only way I stand a chance!

It's over. Dean, Alex, and the other survivors of the Monument 14 have escaped the disaster zone and made it to the safety of a Canadian refugee camp. Some of the kids have been reunited with their families, and everyone is making tentative plans for the future. And then, Niko learns that his lost love, Josie, has survived!Or is it? For Josie, separated from the group and presumed dead, life has gone from bad to worse. Trapped in a terrible prison camp with other exposed O’s and traumatized by her experiences, she has given up all hope of rescue. Meanwhile, scared by the government’s unusual interest in her pregnancy, Astrid—along with her two protectors, Dean and Jake—joins Niko on his desperate quest to be reunited with Josie. In Monument 14: Savage Drift, the stunningly fierce conclusion to the Monument 14 trilogy, author Emmy Laybourne ups the stakes even higher for a group of kids who have continually survived the unthinkable. Can they do so one last time?

Emmy is running a Bonus Content giveaway for people who pre-order her book! Click on this link to go to her website and get your short story!

To help spread word about the campaign, we’re running an ADDITIONAL giveaway! Enter this rafflecopter to have your choice of two prizes. You can either win a Mega Swag pack or a signed paperback of both MONUMENT 14 and SKY ON FIRE.